GPS Software
GPS software continues to become increasingly powerful as software developers create and expand upon the different ways that people and industries can use GPS receivers.
For individuals, travel does remain the primary reason for using GPS software, and new software from the leading GPS companies has made travel a lot easier. For international travelers, Garmin has updated its City Navigators Europe NT, which now has over 1.3 million points of interest and map coverage of Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. All of the other major European countries are still included, now with expanded coverage in the U.K., Finland, Portugal, Spain, and the Czech Republic. This means enjoying detailed maps of major metropolitan areas in Europe including motorways, national and regional thoroughfares, local roads, turn restrictions, speed categories, and updated listings for restaurants, hotels, and gas stations.
Closer to home, Garmin has teamed up with Mad Maps, Inc. to provide pre-planned weekend trips around the New York area and other places of interest. These maps create a perfect weekend by providing information about scenic routes, the best places to stop, and a local history of the region.
Magellan’s MapSend Lakes USA mapping software offers a comprehensive navigational directory for boating, fishing, diving, water sports, and camping. An integrated basemap allows for mapping of local roadways and lakes that aren’t included with the software. Fishing Hot Spots and Lakemaster Maps SD cards provide more information about local fishing, depth contours, underwater structures and details about surrounding towns and rural areas. Points of interests include lodging, beaches, ramps, service stations, and campgrounds for most lakes across the country.
Magellan has gone even farther with GPS software designed for the outdoors. Using the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 30 meter elevation grid, Magellan has created the most detailed topo elevation dataset available for the United States, which they have named MapSend Topo 3D USA. This software is the ultimate navigational tool for any weekend warrior. The points of interest are generated from the databases of the U.S. Geological survey, NAVTEC, and TRAILS.com, which means access to 30,000 outdoor destinations including national parks and natural wonders, ski areas and hiking trails, navigable rivers, and all of the hotels and restaurants serving them. The incredible part about this software is that all MapSend Topo products use an invisible grid of equally spaced horizontal points, with each point having an elevation value in order to mimic the earth’s surface in 3 D. This means that you can evaluate each hiking trail, ski slope, and river with point-by point-elevations to determine the difficulty of every course you navigate.
This kind of GPS problem-solving can also be used by architects, surveyors and city planners as well. The main difference is that they use more professional GPS software programs that can actually calculate elevation and distance accurately within one centimeter. Using programs like GPS2CAD, developed by consulting firm JTB World, GPS generated information is incorporated into AutoCAD design software programs. This allows architects to produce accurate renderings of buildings, parks, highways and other construction projects so that they can be viewed by the public and other people that need to see them.
NTech and Farm Works have also developed GPS software for handhelds that work with the agriculture industry to quantify information like nutrient response, crop condition, and yield potential. This allows users to create site-specific maps that help with crop projections based on soil attributes of specific areas.
GPS software has many more uses for science, industry, and the management of the Earth’s resources. With new GPS software continually being created, there is almost no limit to what can be accomplished by using it to make our world easier to navigate.
Posted in General GPS Information
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